Turnabout Spades
by Ian Jenkins
Summary: The story of Astor "Ace" Spade, an young private investigator caught up in the dealings of his boss's past.   Set post-Trials and Tribulations/pre-Ace Attorney Investigations
1. Turnabout Spades: Trial

February 26, 10:13 AM

District Court

Courtroom No. 4

The young man wore an even, serious expression upon his face, despite his gaudy appearance. Wisps of short dirty blond hair poked out from under an elegant dark fedora, the back of a playing card visible from the behind the hatband wrapped around it. A button-down white shirt, stuck almost rigidly to his chest, was pressed beneath a buttoned purple vest, with a loose purple tie dangling from around the unbuttoned neck. The young man's eyes were a steel bluish-gray and were locked straight on the defendant, his hands tightly gripping the front of the witness stand, as if letting go would send him hurtling into an abyss. His mind was whirling as he stared intently at the man being prosecuted, who himself was a picture of calm. But a sudden voice brought him out of his trance.

"Witness." It said, "Will you please state your name and occupation for the court record?"

He broke his gaze away from the defendant and moved his eyes straight ahead toward the Judge's bench, not seeing fit to acknowledge with a glance the Prosecutor that had asked the question. He took a deep breath and spoke.

"My name… is Astor Spade." He replied, voice a light baritone, "I'm a Junior Investigator for the JLD Private Investigations firm."

There was some rustling of paper over at the Prosecutor's bench as the man spoke again, "The same firm owned and operated by the defendant, Jack Daman, correct?"

Astor nodded, followed by looking to the defendant. "Yes, sir, that's correct."

For his part, Jack Daman still retained an almost perfect calm, Astor noted. Not a single graying hair was out of place from the top of his head to his mustache. His eyes remained half-lidded behind his glasses, almost as though he were tired or bored. His lips formed a perfectly straight line, without a hint of either a smile or a frown upon them. His tailor-made red suit was neatly pressed, not a single wrinkle could be seen on any part of it.

'Looking pretty confident there… aren't you, Jack?' Astor thought, watching him carefully, 'Everything's locked up tight, huh?'

The barest of smiles came across Jack Daman's face, making Astor instinctively grimace. 'Flinched.' Astor thought, 'He knows he holds all the cards.'

"What exactly is the nature of the relationship between yourself and the defendant?" the Prosecutor spoke again.

Astor looked toward the Judge's bench again, regaining his composure and his neutral expression. "Jack is my boss at JLD Private Investigations. He's my friend, my mentor."

As the Prosecutor spoke again, Astor kept his focus on the bench, words surrounding him and becoming meaningless as his memories drifted away, far away from this courtroom, this difficult situation he now found himself in, mind escaping to a simpler time…


	2. Reminiscence: Simpler Times

March 3, 3:41 PM (Two Years Earlier...)

Office of JLD Private Investigations

Astor Spade sat back comfortably in the seat provided by the man across from him, a single arm draped behind him. Behind the desk, facing him, Jack Daman silently watched him, sizing him up like a jeweler looking through a loupe at prospective piece. They were meeting in Jack's office, a fairly large room. Against a wall near the door, a bookshelf filled to the brim with various works of detective fiction as well as police procedural guides, a strange mix. On the other side, file cabinets that seemed to stretch on forever, no doubt records of every case that the private investigators had taken over the past few years. Directly behind Jack's desk was draped a small banner with the JLD logo on it with its motto scrawled beneath the crest, almost giving off a military-type vibe, as though Jack were a general, reclining in his headquarters.

"You picked a hell of a time to leave the force, boyo." Jack quipped, folding his hands on top of his desk, staring at Astor over the top of his glasses, "A police detective murdered, both the Chief of Police and Chief Prosecutor disgraced… people are starting to lose faith, and the establishment of law and order is in turmoil." He shook his head, "I knew Dyce Rollins when he was just the Deputy Chief. Now that he's the full-on Chief, he needs every good man he can get."

Astor shifted a bit in his seat and shrugged with his free arm, smiling slightly, "The higher-ups dug their own grave, as deep in this crap they were in. It ain't as though we had the best reputation in the world anyway."

"That aside," Jack leveled his gaze at Astor, "why _did_ you leave? Word around the office was that you were one of the department's rising star patrolmen-"

The smile that had been on Astor's face fell to the floor, crashed, and died on impact. He sat forward in the chair; the arm that had been dangling from behind came up and smashed its index finger onto Jack's desk.

"I wasn't meant for the beat!" he exclaimed, eyes lighting up with intensity, almost challenging Jack, "I joined the police force to become a detective! That's what I was born to do, that's what I was meant to do!"

Jack remained unperturbed by Astor's outburst, still simply staring at him through half-lidded eyes. "Did you apply?"

"'We don't feel you meet the qualifications.'" Astor replied in a mocking tone, sitting back abruptly, "Every damn time I tried to take the required aptitude test, that's what I was told." He threw up his hands in frustration, "They're gonna tell me – ME – that, when they still have that inept oaf Dick Gumshoe on the payroll!"

The older man shook his head, "Dick Gumshoe is a valued veteran of the precinct-"

"Being Miles Edgeworth's pet detective doesn't make him valuable." Astor cut him off with a wave of his hand, "It makes him a puppet of the Prosecutor's Office, nothing more."

"If that were true," Jack interceded with a smile, "it would explain why he's still there, mm?"

Astor paused a moment, mulling it over, then sat back with a disgusted sigh.

Jack took the opportunity to rise from his seat and circle around slowly, "To be perfectly honest, boyo, I knew why you left. I knew what your true passion was."

Astor blinked up at him, "Then why did you ask?"

"I wanted to hear it for myself." Jack folded his arms and leaned against a wall, "Let's be honest. Both the police department and the Prosecutor's office have always had their fair shares of trouble, and these recent incidents aren't going to do much more than open up old wounds, if not create new ones outright."

He moved across the room, behind Astor's chair, to the rows of filing cabinets along the wall, "Sometimes, to find out the truth, we need to step back from the rules and regulations that hold the police back. Rules and regulations are only tools for the corrupt to hide behind. I know that first-hand."

Astor nodded at that, "Yeah… yeah, I remember reading about you in the newspaper. You and your team cracked that whole corruption ring wide open years ago."

Jack smiled, opening one of the cabinets and thumbing through the folders, "Ah, yes. The Officers' Cabal is exactly what I was talking about when I was talking about opening old wounds. It was a prime example of police corruption and the public was hardly going to let the department forget about it anytime soon."

"But then, you left, after you sent the Cabal's leader – what was his name? Owens? – to prison. …So, what was that about leaving when the Chief needed you most?" Astor couldn't help but crack a smile at Jack's back.

The older man paused and allowed a smile to come onto his face, "Maybe so, boyo, but we had the common sense to leave with a purpose, not because we weren't getting our way." Pulling a file folder from the cabinet, he closed the drawer and came back around to his desk, "Truth be told, even with Lieutenant Owens in prison, we knew the Cabal was far from finished. But without any way to know who was on the take, there was only one choice to make."

"So you left." Astor finished for him, "Started up this swanky place."

"Precisely," Jack chuckled and retook his seat, opening up the folder in front of him, "and our decision to leave is where our motto came from." He pointed behind him at the banner hanging above his chair, "What does it say?"

Astor squinted, staring up at the banner. "It says… 'Upholding Justice.'"

"'Upholding Justice,' that's right." Jack nodded, "You hear people talking about law and order, you hear them talking about the police, the courts, and they call it the 'justice system.'" With the words 'justice system', Astor heard a note of distaste in Jack's voice. "At best, it's a misnomer and, at worse, an outright lie. Rules, regulations, laws… these things only serve the men that create them, nothing more."

Astor grinned crookedly, not entirely sure where Daman was going with this, "So what do you propose, then? Anarchy?"

"Accountability." Jack replied, not making eye contact, focused more on the folder in front of him, "Justice and the law are two very different things, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise."

The younger man was silent as Jack continued to pore over the contents of the folder. He craned his neck slightly to see what exactly was being read.

"I have your file here, and it's the reason I wanted you to come in today." Jack answered the unspoken question, not missing a beat from where he left off in his reading, "Despite the circumstances of your departure from the police force, I think we might have a place for you here."

Astor sat straight up in his seat at that. He tried hard to conceal it with an air of casual disinterest, but Jack could see the light and excitement in his eyes as he spoke, "Oh really…?"

"Your passion for the opportunity is obvious, so I'm willing to give you a shot." Jack went on, "You'll be trained in investigative techniques and shown the ropes on some of the cases we're called to. Once we're sure you can do your job without doing something stupid like swallowing your fingerprinting kit, we'll see about getting you certified."

Astor nodded enthusiastically – but not TOO enthusiastically, as he was still trying to maintain his cool demeanor – and leaned forward, "Awesome, I can't wait to show you what I can do."

"Do you swear to perform your tasks to your utmost ability and to uphold justice in all its forms?"

"I do."

"Well, then," Jack removed a piece of paper from the folder and slid it toward Astor, "I'll need your signature on this contract. It basically states that..."

Jack wasn't even done with the first sentence before Astor had grabbed the nearest pen and signed it, the words of the older man not even reaching his ears as inward shouts of glee and jubilation filled his head.

"Mr. Spade?"

'Detective Astor Spade.' He thought, 'Hell of a ring to it.'

"Mr. Spade."

Strange. Lost in his thoughts, Astor could have sworn he heard a gavel hammering.


	3. Turnabout Spades: Examination

February 26, 10:18 AM (Present Day)

District Court

Courtroom No. 4

* * *

><p>"Mr. Spade!"<p>

The sound of the judge's gavel snapped Astor Spade back to reality, breaking his earlier calm demeanor and startling him slightly.

"Er… sorry, y'Honor…"

"If we could have your attention, Mr. Spade?" the Prosecutor's voice spoke again. Finally, Astor made eye contact with the man, a bespectacled, balding gentleman, probably in his early-to-mid-fifties he guessed. During his time working at the precinct, he'd seen him around quite a bit, but had one of those forgettable faces, one that would be lost in a crowd. His voice, however, was anything but forgettable, and was the only way he was really able to remember who he was.

"Sorry, Mr. Payne." Astor replied with a large, insincere smile, making a mental note to write his name down somewhere, "Could y'repeat the question, please?"

But Prosecutor Winston Payne was having none of the insincerity, giving the witness as flat a stare as he could, as nothing seemed to be able to penetrate the glasses he wore, "Perhaps you need your hearing checked, Mr. Spade? I asked, 'How long have you worked for the defendant?'"

Astor leaned forward on the witness stand, thinking back. "It'll be... two years in March." he replied, "I joined JLD Private Investigations following the arrest of Chief Gant."

"Ah, that's right... you were a police officer, weren't you?" Payne went on with his own insincere smile.

Astor could feel his blood pressure starting to rise, but kept the fake smile set firmly on his face.

Something about that comment rubbed him the wrong way, especially coming from a man like Payne. He was almost sure it was made to get under his skin.

'Don't give in to it.' went one part of his mind, 'You know he's trying to bait you. That's how these Prosecutors work.'

"Yes, Prosecutor, I was." he finally spoke, still smiling, "I'm flattered y'remember me."

"I have to tell you, Mr. Spade, I can't abide quitters." Payne shook his head disdainfully, like a father scolding his child, "Abandoning the police department in what was possibly its darkest hour... truly shameful."

Astor raised himself up from his leaning position, all pretenses of pleasantries gone from his face, replaced by an undeniable frown and a hard stare toward the Prosecutor's bench. "Are we trying t'make this personal, Mr. Payne? I didn't know my career was on trial, here."

"Of course not." the Prosecutor replied, smiling that damnable smile. Payne had scored something of a point there in that exchange, Astor thought, and he knew it. "This is a murder trial. A trial that almost didn't come to pass, thanks to you."

Astor tightened his jaw and opened his mouth to speak but Payne beat him to the punch, "But none of the evidence I've seen seems to indicate that you were an accomplice or that you were trying to deliberately sabotage the Prosecution's case. You were simply blundering about, as is usually the case with your private investigator types."

"Tell me, Prosecutor," Astor cut in sharply, not bothering to feign a respectful tone nor hide the frustration in his voice, "am I here as a witness or as your personal punching bag? I understand not getting a decent victory in several years can be a blow to your ego, but-"

"Why, you little-"

The increasingly irate banter between the two was abruptly cut off by a sharp hammering of the gavel.

"Mr. Payne." the Judge intoned, looking down at the two men, "Mr. Spade. If you could both focus on the facts of the case, please?"

"Of course, your Honor." Payne was quick to reply, breaking away contact with Astor to return to the case files in front of him. "Frank Goode. Grant Bedder. Harold Zebest. Familiar names to you, Mr. Spade?"

Astor had calmed slightly, irritation still present on his features, but he managed to keep his tone level, "Yes, Mr. Payne, they would be; they were my colleagues at JLD Private Investigations."

"Yes, they were." the Prosecutor nodded, "All three of them were private investigators. All three of them were former police detectives. And all three of them were victims of your mutual employer, Mr. Jack Daman."

Astor instinctively glanced at Jack at that as a murmur rippled through the people in attendance. The man hadn't flinched, hadn't budged an inch even as Payne spoke the charge against him. Not a flicker of emotion across his face, nothing so much as a grimace upon being accused with murder. For the moment, Astor couldn't tell whether Jack had a fantastic poker face or if there was a coldness in him that would freeze the devil in his tracks.

"You were there for two years, Mr. Spade." Payne spoke up again, "How well did you know the victims?"

"Not that well. I wasn't exactly the social type an' we all worked our own cases. That's the way they were used to running things." Astor replied, moving his gaze from Jack again, "Even when we all came to work together on large cases, they were a lot closer to each other than they were to me."

"And why was that?"

"S'pretty obvious, I'd think." he shrugged, "They were police detectives f'years before they went private. They'd been through plenty t'gether. I was the new kid comin' in. Doubt they were that ready to open up."

"Or was it because of something else, Mr. Spade?" Payne flicked his hand about his forehead, as if nudging a pompadour that was no longer there, "Something that, through your very... helpful investigations, you uncovered that they didn't want to share with you?"

The young detective said nothing, instead keeping his gaze leveled at the prosecutor. He knew exactly where Payne was going with this.

"Let's go back." the Prosecutor said, "Let's go back to the very last case you all worked on together, Mr. Spade."

The last case? Astor thought for a moment, frowning slightly. That case. Not exactly something he wanted to remember, but there was no going back now. He shifted his stance uncomfortably.

'I'm here as a witness.' he thought, mind racing, 'A witness of the prosecution, no less. ...so why does it feel like I'M the one that's on trial here?'

"...The last case we all worked on together was several weeks ago." He began, "We had been hired to investigate death threats made against a certain person. We were told to find out who it was an' apprehend them."

"And who hired you?" Payne persisted, "Who was the client?"

The young detective was silent for a few moments, as if weighing the consequences of the next words he spoke. Confidentiality, at that point, was hardly an issue; he was damn sure positive that the Prosecutor already knew who it was anyway.

Astor placed both hands on the witness stand as a sigh escaped his lips, focus once again on the judge's bench. "The client was Dyce Rollins, Chief of Police."

The courtroom exploded in shouting.

The Judge repeatedly hammered his gavel in an attempt to restore order as Astor began to recall the events of that day.


End file.
